"Vagina Monologues" to benefit theater group

Friday

May 18, 2007 at 2:00 AM

By Margaret Carroll-Bergman I&M Staff Writer

A benefit performance of Eve Ensler’s controversial play “The Vagina Monologues” is scheduled for Wednesday, May 30 at The Chicken Box nightclub to raise money for Seaside Shakespeare, an island theater group.

Susan McGinnis, founder of Seaside Shakespeare, said she hopes the play will also spark some dialogue in the community as well as give island actresses an opportunity to broaden their theatrical range.

“Hopefully, it will make people think,” said McGinnis. “My goal is to get 100 people – men and women – to come to the show.”

“I’m interested in creating opportunities for people who are real good and don’t always get the chance. For every role there is for a woman, there are five roles for men,” said McGinnis, who also collaborated with Kim Sherman and Brian Loeffer on writing the recent summer favorite, “The Wit and Wisdom of Will’s Women.” The money raised from “The Vagina Monologues” will help produce “Twelfth Night” this summer.

“The Vagina Monologues” is based on a series of interviews Ensler conducted with 200 women age 6 to 80. At times intimate, humorous and provocative, “The Vagina Monologues” almost always causes debate. It’s been called “empowering” and “heartbreaking” by some critics, and picketed at theaters across the country by religious and other family-values groups. It is not for the faint of heart. Ensler wrote the first draft of the play in 1996 and every year adds a new monologue to reflect a current event – one year it was the rape of Bosnian women refugees, another year, the genital mutilation of African girls.

One vignette tells the story of a young woman who is raped by a friend of her father, and years later, molested by an older woman, which the narrator portrays as healing. It is one the most highly-criticized vignettes because of the age of the victim. Other stories deal with the birth of Ensler’s grandchild and language.

“There’s an 80-year-old woman who can’t say the word,” said McGinnis. “I just feel that the message is positive,” she continued. “I celebrate her (Ensler’s) words and what she’s done.”

Ensler wrote three parts – Woman 1, Woman 2, and Woman 3 – and performed all three roles in 1999 at the off-Broadway Westside Theater in New York.

“Some people think it might be exploiting women, but it celebrates women. It champions women, but not at the expense of men,” she said.

“Once a woman approaches 40, her opportunities as an actress are too small,” she continued. “I’m a feminist, but that is not why I am doing this show. I’m an actor. I want to work and create opportunities for myself and others.

“I like the idea that the play is approached by a sense of humor,” she said of “The Vagina Monologues.” “We are nowhere without a sense of humor and after all, a vagina never bit anyone.”

McGinnis said that the idea of producing “The Vagina Monologues” came to her when she read about “V-Day,” Feb. 14, when Ensler’s play is performed across the country on college campuses and the proceeds are donated to women’s shelters.

“Nantucket has a long history of strong women going back to whaling times,” added McGinnis. “At one time, women ran the island, while their husbands went off on long whaling voyages. Today, there is still a great community of strong women.”

McGinnis said she “cut her teeth and pounded the pavement” for 12 years in New York before she came to the island in 2003 and decided to stay. In the spring of 2006, she left for a couple of months to work at the Circle X Theater in Los Angeles, which showcases the plays of contemporary writers.

Her acting credits include Miranda’s secretary on an episode of “Sex and the City” and the mother in the short film, “Love Hurts.” McGinnis was in Theatre Workshop Of Nantucket’s “Bad Dates” and “The Smell of The Kill.”

One of her cousins once noted that McGinnis seems to get cast in “man-bashing” plays. “I don’t think that’s so,” said McGinnis. “OK, in ‘The Smell of The Kill,’ the women lock their husbands in a meat locker.”

She will also be appearing this June in TWN’s “Lone Star Grace” as Barbie Ann DeMarco Sanchez.

“The Vagina Monologues” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 30 at The Chicken Box, Dave Street. The bar opens at 6 p.m. Tickets for the benefit performance are $30.

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